The Forge: Fire and Ice

FROST FIRES Pierre Le Gué

From track level the southbound platform looked high and safe. Shunters and permanent way men worked down here all the time, but I always felt it was forbidden territory, especially on a cold dark winter night like this. A ‘here be dragons’ feeling. Stone flags gave way to crunching cinders under my feet and the sharp tang of smoke grew stronger. Reaching the bottom of the platform slope, I stood with a bucket of coal in each hand looking warily up the tracks in both directions. Porter means carrier and that’s what we did, feeding Lancaster Castle Station’s trackside frost fires regularly during twelve-hour night shifts in those days of steam.

The eleven-oh-eight passenger train had just left for London and I could see its red light through the smoke as it chuffed away up the gradient toward Preston. From the open door of Lancaster Number One signal box with its gas lit windows sounded the ting-ting of a bell, signifying that the eleven-oh-eight had cleared the section. It was safe to cross the lines.

Trackside cables whispered on the platform retaining wall, counterweights creaked and a home signal clunked down on the gantry beyond the box. Light filters changed from green to red. I had two tracks to cross to get to the fire so I looked north – and south too. Occasionally an engine had startled me by creeping up silently with only a stealthy chuff and a clank of rods when it had gone past, so I wasn’t taking any chances.

Between the main north and southbound through lines was the eighteen-foot high water column, a nine-inch diameter steel pipe with a swivel top and long leather end for locomotive firemen to fill their tanks. Next to it a thin column of smoke indicated that the frost fire was still alive, warming the surrounding air just enough to stop the wheel valve control from freezing on January nights. Some fires were open braziers but this was a large cylindrical stove with a tall chimney and a door for stoking. I opened the hatch, tipped in the coal one bucket at a time with a whoof of flame and a belch of smoke from the chimney.

The stove clanged shut and I listened, standing still and alert with breath steaming. Through the steel of the northbound through line a faint eerie whisper had begun, quickly turning to a persistent hissing and then an urgent thrum. They had just laid the long sections of welded track and we were not yet used to this new sound of a train’s approach that replaced the familiar clickety-clack.

Now, above the swishing and humming in the rails sounded a rumbling throb, soon recognisable as the deep rhythmic mutter of a Type 40 diesel approaching fast down Ripley Bank. Then, beneath the twinkling signal gantries on the southbound line a dimmer light appeared, quickly resolving itself into the letters OZOO, the code for a light engine – one travelling without a train. I stood enthralled, with that great dark entity, ‘OZOO’ homing in on me. Then it was past, looming high above the rails with a blast of horns and a buffeting thud of wind, leaving a spiral of litter down the track in a swirl of diesel-scented air. Seconds later the northbound train was a red light in the distance on its way to Carlisle. The whistling thrum of its motor receded and the rails hissed back down into silence.

I let go the standpipe wheel and headed back toward the safety of the platform with empty buckets clanking. Inside Number One box a figure heaved on a long red and white painted wooden lever. Cables under the northbound platform creaked; far up the line a signal clumped and green changed again to red. I looked along the two tracks I had to cross and saw Bill, one of the signalmen, at the top of his long wooden staircase taking a breath of air.

‘Anything coming?’ I hailed him.

‘Nay, lad. You’re all right,’ he called back.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Course I’m sure. We don’t want thee haunting t’ place for t’ next twenty years.’

Come to think of it, neither did I, so as Bill went back inside the box I stepped gingerly out on to the track. Something was strange. Half a mile south up the bank, the signal lamps shimmered as if through a heat haze, and the icy winter night suddenly felt warmer with a breath of wind from the south. Was I imagining it? Nothing was scheduled, but an eerie faint thrumming sounded in the rails. A train, certainly, but the now fast-approaching sound resolved into a now-familiar persistent hiss. This was one for the signalmen.

‘Bill! There’s something coming!’

Bill appeared at the head of the staircase.

‘Can’t be.’

‘There is. Listen.’

‘Well, I’ll–’

He hurried down to join me.

Colour lights on the northbound signal gantry dimmed, flickered and steadied again at ‘Clear’. A brilliant headlight was nearly upon us. Bill bounded up the box stairs toward the phone, only to stop half way as the air filled with light and sound. And then it was past. Not with the sudden blast and firebox glare of a steamer or diesel exhaust thunder here, but a high-pitched whine accompanied by the familiar thud of air that could knock a man over.

Bill stopped half way up the steps. The office door opened over on Platform 4 and Gordon the duty foreman ran out in time to see two red lights disappearing north toward Carlisle Bridge, leaving behind them the traditional dusty swirl of drink cartons, crisp packets and cigarette ends.

Then it was gone, the sound muting suddenly and not fading gradually. All the signals looked normal, but over nearby Carlisle Bridge there hung a pale luminous fog. Perhaps it had seeped up from the River Lune below, but I’d never seen it before.

I looked at Gordon.

‘What was it?’

‘Looked like one of them there Japanese silver bullet trains.’

‘Come off it. They’ve only had them a year or two.’

‘Secret test, maybe. I saw the prototype Deltic in Penrith before they entered service. Thought I was seeing things then too.’

‘This were no Deltic, lad.’

Well, no. And that was the end of it. Until, well, it must have been fifty years on, with Virgin’s red and the silver bullet trains now commonplace, when Bill and I were talking about the old days over a few drinks in the Railway Club.

‘Ever hear anything more about… you know? That train.’

‘Not a peep, lad. I sometimes wonder if it happened.’

‘Same here. Ask myself if I’m going funny.’

‘Neither of us is.’

‘How do you mean?’

He reached into his jacket pocket.

‘This, my son, will put your mind at rest. I’ve carried it with me all these years.’

I looked.

‘A Rocket Bar wrapper?’

‘Correct. From 1965.’

‘So?’

‘Lad, Rocket Bars didn’t come out till the Nineties. Neither had this.’

He produced a meticulously folded paper:

‘Plus, a plastic bag of similar stuff, off the tracks, at home.’

‘No one could throw anything out of a modern train.’

That much was true, and still is.

‘Maybe – whatever it was – carried the changes with it.’

‘Could it still be around? Bill, we’re into sci fi now.’

‘No answer to that one, lad. All we can do is keep watching the tracks.’

Yes. Keep watching the tracks. Forget the skies.

the end